HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY - UTOPIA OR REALITY?

Abstract

The language of and on ’Human rights’ has been created within a revolutionary environment that called for a new social order and political governance. New identities were constructed and projected and new ideologies emerged in the context of the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution. Progressively one observed the emergence of a ‘democratic’ spectrum and democratic promise of a (future) society closer to justice, fairness, equality and freedom. In this paper I will explore the relationship between human rights and democracy contributing to the clarification of concepts and tasks ahead of us. Human rights and Democracy have the potential to go hand-in-hand and use each other’s strengths to realize themselves. However, the relationship between democracy and human rights is not so obvious as one may tend to think. In fact, while instinctively one may want to believe that democracies must be committed to respect fundamental human rights, it is not clear how this is done. In this paper I want to address the tension between democracy and human rights. In order to do so I will start with a main question, namely, what are human rights and what is their role in democracies?

KEYWORDS: Democracy. Human rights. Economy. Participation.
Political equality.